Extracting Geneva's vocation
Geneva Wins!
An expression of Geneva's collective consciousness, this slogan was born out of the crisis. It is a perfect illustration of two diametrically opposed trends. Underneath its rebellious and winning exterior, "Genève gagne" sounds like a timid and uncertain affirmation, like a last attempt to deny the atmosphere of gloom that makes every inspiration a superhuman effort.
But beyond this last moribund gasp to ward off the inevitable decline, this slogan conveys a wonderful hope. Better still: the opportunity of a trancendence!
Geneva can win: Geneva can be reborn in a new dimension of its vocation. Today, on our planet where everything is interrelated and interdependent, we can only win together. Individual and regional well-being is indissolubly linked to general well-being. Understand: planetary and cosmic.
The new dimension of Geneva's vocation is education. Education in the broad, global and spiritual sense: to enable each person to transform his or her vision of the world, to rid him or herself of the remnants of 19th century rationalist thinking in order to enter the next century renewed.
Our city has long been a beacon city, a "laboratory" of the planet. All races, nationalities, and religions rub shoulders here. When our understanding of the world was dominated by a religious vision, Geneva was the cradle of a new synthesis, Protestantism. In the first painful upheavals of a global society, Geneva gave birth to the great humanitarian organizations, then to the League of Nations, and finally to the United Nations and its derivative organizations. With the intensification of international trade and politics, Geneva became an important political and financial crossroads.
During major crises, Geneva was able to offer the world a model for the next stage of human evolution. Moral: we have to move!
The current crisis is much deeper than we want to admit. It is our vision of the world that is collapsing, and with it, all our habits, our certainties and our social systems. One world is dying, another is being born. In all fields of knowledge, major upheavals are taking place, making our knowledge, our behaviors and our institutions obsolete. We must imperatively transform our understanding, and we are pressed to do so from all sides. Reading today's newspaper is enough to convince us: we will not solve the crisis with the recipes of the past.
It is the entire Geneva community - and the world community...- that must learn to think differently.
Geneva, capital of conscious education!
The project is simple: to develop, test and then offer to the world community a global and transdisciplinary education program that represents the synthesis of our most recent discoveries on the nature of reality. A project that involves all citizens, all ages, all fields of activity, all levels of society.
This project is simple, because it reverses our perspectives. Rather than making a complex inventory of our problems and differences, it aims to find the common denominators of these differences, to inscribe them in a new synthesis, and then to experiment with the result in our community.
The process of transmuting Geneva's vocation will last until the year 2000. It will constitute a vast "construction site", an active cooperation of all the actors of society. Ethical foundations will guarantee the healthy development of the process: this project is a common adventure, free of dogmatism, and in which each party participates for the good of the whole.
As a first step, a broad information campaign will lay the foundations of the project and encourage all social partners to articulate their own vision of the renewal of thought and behavior in their respective fields. At the same time, meetings between social groups will stimulate the creativity of each.
Congresses and conferences will be organized. Leading figures from different disciplines will be invited, visionaries who no longer seek to solve the crisis with recipes from the past, but who have eyes open enough to distinguish new trends, and minds flexible enough to give them concrete articulation.
From kindergartens to the University of the Third Age, reflections and works will be organized on the theme of the renewal of thought: reality being the mirror of our thoughts, what kind of thoughts can guarantee us a harmonious future?
The different parties will cooperate in working groups to elaborate a transformation of political thought, stimulated by their efforts to integrate their differences in a larger context. Likewise, companies, unions and employees will articulate concepts oriented to a common perspective.
A special state department will be created for the occasion. Its role will be to animate and manage the development of the project, to ensure communication between its many participants, to give it a strong audience among the population, to encourage any initiative that goes in its direction, and to maintain the quality level of the whole. The various departments of the State will contribute in their own fields of intervention.
Banks and large companies will carry out their own reflection on the renewal of thought, in their structures and in their relations with the world. They will also nourish the project by promoting artistic or cultural initiatives directly related to the project.
The media will be delighted. Special reports will report on the progress of the project. Broadcasts will broadcast the debates and meetings. In the bistros and streetcars, discussions will go on, everyone sharing their experiences and discoveries.
Geneva will once again become a pilot city in the present, instead of nostalgically contemplating its past influence. Forget the competition with Vienna or New York: the water jet will become the symbol of an inner knowledge that springs from the common reservoir of consciousness. International organizations will not want to leave the city that represents the essence of their existence: the promotion and establishment of a new order of understanding. Those in charge of the tourist office will be overjoyed.
Many other ideas appear, but... shhh! It is everyone's contribution that will make the project richer. The gloom will disappear along with the current absurdity, evacuated by the emergence of a true meaning of life.
To sum up, the current crisis is the direct consequence of our vision of the world. Geneva's vocation has always been to model and radiate new orders of understanding, through the forms most appropriate to each era. Today, our challenge is to transform our worldview. This is the essence of education, and education lasts a lifetime.
Geneva can become the capital of education, the beacon of a renaissance of consciousness. That would please Piaget.
Alain-Yan Mohr,
Published in "Santé pour tous", March 1993
Third prize in the competition "Un Projet pour Genève" of the Tribune de Genève, 1993
